TrapcodeShareLog

Inside the Nebulae – tutorial and AE project

Peder Norrby — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 14:19:05 +0000

An imagination of flying in the gas clouds of space. Actual images of nebulas taken with the Hubble space telescope were combined in After Effects with CG gas clouds and stars made using Trapcode Form and Starglow.

Tutorial:

Download AE CS5 project file

Trapcode Form Ocean

Sara Bennett — Sun, 27 Nov 2011 14:28:52 +0000

A little experiment i did to create an semi-realistic ocean using Trapcode Form, fractal noise, vector blur and some clever texturing.

Get the Trapcode Form ocean file here > TrapcodeFormOcean.aep.zip

Drop me a note if you have problems, queries, or just to show off what you've done with it! ^^

Zen Alien by Cassidy Bisher

Cassidy Bisher — Thu, 17 Nov 2011 14:25:01 +0000

This is a trapcode particular experiment I worked on. Really working on the lighting and shading features in trapcode particular.

Vimeo Render http://vimeo.com/31113848

Download CS5 project file here: Zen Alien

Form Galaxy II, by Dan Sollis

Dan Sollis — Tue, 08 Nov 2011 14:30:24 +0000

My first major test of the new OBJ import functionality of Trapcode Form 2. I created the galaxy object using the "Spray Points" tool in Lightwave, painting them into the rough shape of a galaxy. I then applied a vortex deform to it, to further twist it into the right shape.

This object was then brought into After Effects as an OBJ and I layered a couple of instances of Form to create the richness of the stars. I also used a luminance-tracked version of it with Video Copilot Optical Flares for the bigger stars, seen as you move in closer (as well the hot central star/singularity in the centre).

There's some fractal-noise-derived nebula objects in there too, to add to the overall texture of the piece. I've used Trapcode Horizon for some distant ones, along with some basic masked 3D planes. Anyway, hope you like it - the project files are available to download for free from the Digital Distortion website.

Music is "Cad Goddeu (Revised)" by Nest - serein.co.uk/releases/sere001/nest-retold

Cinema 4D scene to Trapcode Form 2.0.2

Peder Norrby — Mon, 31 Oct 2011 18:28:12 +0000

Tutorial showing how to create a scene in Cinema 4D and export an OBJ and Cinema's camera. And import all this in Adobe After Effects so the Cinema render perfectly matches Trapcode Form.

Sorry for my poor C4D skillz!

Note that you need Trapcode Form 2.0.2 to get the "Normalize" checkbox used here.

Kung Fu Panda 2 stylized fire effect

Sara Bennett — Sat, 10 Sep 2011 00:35:02 +0000

I was watching this pretty cool video of how some of the fire effects were created in Kung Fu Panda 2 using After Effects and Particular (link). After a lot of watching i figured out how it was made and set about recreating the effect - which I think came out really well.

As a lot of people were interested in it, I thought I'd share the AE file - it is made in After Effects CS5 using Trapcode Particular.

Download CS5 project file: playingwithfire.aep

FORMv2 examples

Peder Norrby — Tue, 23 Aug 2011 22:48:14 +0000

Thorns created using Base Form - Strings with tapering. Text from Layer Map. Displaced with Fractal. Shading using Shadowlet.

Thorns created using Base Form - Strings with tapering. Displaced with Fractal. Shading using Shadowlet.

Thorns created using Base Form - Strings with tapering. Displaced with Fractal. Shading using Shadowlet

Download all three thorns examples: AEP

OBJ sequence + Textured Polygon particles

Particular Smoke Tests

Peder Norrby — Thu, 11 Aug 2011 21:40:51 +0000

Just testing some smoke elements as sprites with Particular in AE - there are interesting possibilities here!

These were quick initial tests. Could be improved by keying the smoke in the pre-comp if it needs to be composited on top of something.

Thanks to Andrew Kramer for posting the smoke clips! Get them here.

Download the AEP

3D Set Extensions Tutorial by Andrew Kramer

Peder Norrby — Wed, 22 Jun 2011 13:31:12 +0000

Very inspiring and informative tutorial by Andrew Kramer of Video Copilot. It covers 3D camera tracking (using The Foundry's CameraTracker AE plug-in), matte painting, masking, color correction, sky replacement and uses Trapcode Particular for the fog/smoke. Highly recommended!

http://www.videocopilot.net/tutorials/3d_set_extensions/

Volumetric fractal smoke - 2 approaches

Dan Sollis — Mon, 13 Jun 2011 19:22:28 +0000

Two little experiments to create pseudo-volumetric smoke objects in After Effects, one using Particular, the other using the built-in fractal noise plugin in AE and an awful lot of layers.

Both have their own unique look. The Fractal noise version took hours to render compared to the Particular version (which took about 30 mins). The project files are free to download and reuse under a Creative Commons license from the Digital Distortion website.

Particular version:

Fractal noise version:

There are issues with visual artifacts when you get closer in to the fractal noise version (you can see the individual layers, creating an ugly "scanline" effect), so hopefully someone else out there can improve the technique and share it!

Update: Based on feedback, I've done a new version of the Particular one, using a custom smoke comp generated using fractal noise. This gives kind of a hybrid look of the two approaches.

The project file is downloadable here.